King-Victoria Transit Hub

[tomh009]

I don't really understand this comment. Most rail stations in Europe are landlords to commercial tenants. Commuters need food, coffee, shopping, and this is (or could be) a high traffic centralized place to provide that (if not now, then in coming years - planning for the future). Perhaps the difference is that most rail stations (at least in Germany, Switzerland) are joint/owned by the rail company (which is often nationalized; Deutsche Bahn, SBB, etc.) - this means it does not fall on the city or municipality to build a rail station, but the rail-company to build infrastructure (bridges, track, stations, etc.) from which they (intend to) profit. If the city is going to build an expensive transit hub, why would they not leverage it to create additional sources of cash-flow, eg. commercial space for a supermarket, or anything else (albeit difficult right now).

You don't need 300k/d passengers to create something interesting (eg. beautiful tree feature in the main hall, like in Madrid). To AC3R's point, we have tremendous talent in this city, but on street level, we could do better
Can we really expect city council members alone to be educated in matters of architecture or urban psychology? (let's leverage our local resource base). My point is that it lacks vision. But....let's see, the plans are likely to change.

Take a look at any of these European stations, and look at the number of tracks, destinations, departures and passengers, and it will be clear that it's a whole order of magnitude (or two) different than Kitchener. Apart from ownership (GO or VIA is not going to start building stations) there simply will not be enough passengers for the foreseeable future to turn it into a commercial hub. And the region doesn't want to be a commercial landlord anyway.

Personally, I find the selected design to be attractive and interesting. Modest, but attractive. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder.